TEHRAN — Saeed Khatibzadeh, the newly-appointed Foreign Ministry spokesman, has dismissed as “baseless” allegations that Iran is arming the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“What is happening in Afghanistan today is the outcome of the U.S. warmongering and interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan,” Khatibzadeh said in a statement released on Monday.

His comments came after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Iran and Russia of arming the Taliban.

“We’ve made clear we know the history, we know that the Russians have armed the Taliban in the past, right. We know that the Iranians continue to arm them today. So we know these facts,” Pompeo claimed in an interview with Radio Free Europe last week.

Rejecting the claim, Khatibzadeh said, “The accusations leveled by the U.S. secretary of state is some kind of shifting the blame onto others and an attempt to divert public opinion of the Afghan people from Washington’s aid to Daesh (ISIS).”

He continued, “The U.S. has not yet given the general public an explanation for the identity of the helicopters flying in the airspace of Afghanistan under the control of NATO to support Daesh.”  

MH/PA